Peter Corris - Follow the Money

'Open the door and we'll go in. Drop the keys as soon as we're inside and keep your hands where I can see them.'

What I could feel on my neck wasn't the muzzle of a pistol. Bigger. A silencer. I did as he said, and as soon as the door was closed he slammed me against the wall. He was as quick as a cat and before I could catch my breath he had both wrists handcuffed behind my back.

'Sergeant Ali,' I said. 'Sharpshooter.'

'Don't forget it. Move inside, we've got some talking to do.'

We went into the sitting room and I froze as I heard him open a flick knife. He sliced my jacket down the back and pulled both halves clear of my tied wrists. He shoved me into a chair, put the gun and knife within reach and felt in the jacket. Deftly, he pulled out my phone and the recording device. He fiddled with it and swore.

'Where's the disk?'

I looked at him and said nothing.

'Doesn't matter,' he said. 'You did us a great service getting rid of Freddy and Lester.'

'Us?'

'William and me.'

'William Habib, aka Richard Malouf?'

Ali smiled. 'Light dawns. I'm curious, Hardy, what made Stephen Chang suspicious of me?'

'Is he suspicious?'

He sighed. 'You're going to be a nuisance the way I knew you would be. Stephen's been keeping me busy on a variety of things. Some of them touching on… what we're talking about now, but I could tell he was holding a lot back. I know you've spoken to William recently.'

As always, Ali was impeccably dressed and groomed. He was handsome, looked fit and clear-eyed-the image of a rising professional policeman. His body language exuded confidence, but I sensed that he entertained a small doubt.

'I did speak to him,' I said, 'and it worries you that you don't know what was said, doesn't it?'

'I said it doesn't matter.'

'I think it does, Karim. You probably don't know that Freddy Wong was getting ready to dispense with Houli. Habib was setting up to double-cross Houli and Freddy Wong. What's to say he won't double-cross you? Hard to find someone to trust, isn't it?'

'You don't know what you're talking about. Shut up and let me think.'

'I'll tell you who to think about-Stephen Chang.'

'Oh, we've already thought about him. Pity, he's a good policeman, but good policemen get killed in the line of duty all the time.'

'Kill him and you'll never draw another peaceful breath.'

'I won't kill him. It'll depend on how things work out, but I think it's most likely that you'll kill him.'

'You must have a weapon here somewhere,' Ali said, 'otherwise it could get messy. Let me see.'

His eye drifted to the cupboard under the stairs. He opened the door and felt among the jackets and coats and bits and pieces hanging there.

'Aha.' He pulled out the. 22 I'd got from Corbett and had more or less forgotten about. He held it by the end of the barrel.

'A popgun, but it'll do.'

Everyone has a weakness and Karim Ali's was vanity. He couldn't resist telling me how Habib had engineered financial disaster for a large number of sizeable Chinese and Lebanese businesses in Sydney and had arranged bail-out finance which carried penalties that would bring whole conglomerations of family concerns crashing down. I didn't really understand much of it, but I gathered that

Habib could keep all the balls in the air for about as long as he pleased.

Offshore, he had similar grips on DFAT personnel who were in a position to facilitate visas for criminals who wouldn't have got through the first level of screening. The idea was that they'd bring their experience and capital to Sydney and operate an under-the-radar criminal network.

'Worth millions,' he said, almost savouring the word. 'Millions.'

'Dirty money,' I said. 'I thought you had a promising career.'

'Too slow, much too slow.'

'I can see Freddy and Lester and Houli and Talat as enforcers, but I don't see your role.'

The expression on his face was almost a smirk. 'That's the cutest part, I-'

'But Habib changed tack,' I said, 'pardon the pun. He took to his boat and ducked out of the arrangement. Let me guess-he thought he and you didn't need the Wongs and Houli. You kept him abreast of things when the little chink in the plan appeared. He was sighted.'

Ali nodded. 'That was careless. I told him to change his appearance and use the moorings he'd set up, but he had the hots for Sun Ling. Gretchen. Putting it all at risk for a woman. Promising her the earth, and she's a junkie.'

'It's been done before and it'll happen again. He's flakey now; wants to do a deal with Chang.'

'No, he knows I'll have to step in. The only deal he can do now is with me. When this is all up and running I'll be in charge of the unit and Chinese and Lebanese crime will run… smoothly.'

I shook my head. 'Megalomania. I don't think you're on very solid ground.'

'Compared to you, I'm on terra firma. You know as well as I do that a big-money, dirty-lawyer network operated here until a certain media magnate left us. The WASPS have had their go: it's the wogs' turn now.'

I watched him as he handled my phone very carefully. It wasn't a particularly interesting phone. He acquainted himself with its functions and I suddenly realised why and had to laugh. His hand shot out for his gun before he realised I hadn't moved.

'You're waiting for his call on my phone,' I said. 'You fed him information when he called you. You don't know where he is, do you?'

'Shut up.'

'To use your boss's expression about how Habib handled me, he'll play you like a fish.'

He took two steps and hit me with a hard chop to the side of my neck. I tried to duck but he was too quick and the blow had a paralysing effect. I could breathe and see but I couldn't move.

The phone buzzed. He had the voice message activated, listened, and let the message run out.

'A woman,' he said, 'sounded young. You old goat.'

Probably Megan, I thought. I was developing a contempt blending with my dislike for him and had to fight the feelings down. Such impulses cloud judgement, and I didn't think Ali held all the cards, not yet. The feeling of paralysis receded, but I kept myself in the rigid position I'd been in as it hit me.

The phone rang again; he listened and then he surprised me. He cleared his throat and answered in a very good imitation of my voice.

'Hardy.'

A pause, then he said, 'It's Karim Ali, William. You're not going to do any deals with Chang, you're going to do a deal with me.'

It wasn't hard to guess at Habib's surprise but I had no way to tell what he said except to infer it from Ali's responses. He told Habib to cool down and think and it was a sure bet Habib was doing plenty of thinking. Ali explained that he'd been forced to act because Chang had become suspicious of him.

'He has to be removed.'

Habib must not have liked that because Ali had to go into some detail about how it could all still work with him running things-would work better, in fact.

He told Habib he could arrange to make it appear that I had killed Chang. Habib apparently liked that even less.

'Very well,' Ali said, 'we'll have to discuss all this face to face. I agree there's a lot to consider.'

At a guess Habib said something about his intention to ditch the whole thing in return for immunity because Ali became conciliatory.

'Look, you were under a lot of pressure. It got bigger than we thought too quickly and you were all caught up with that woman. That's water under the bridge. The Wongs are out and that's a plus. We can get some other Chinese in who're more compliant and I can handle Houli. It'll be all right. You can… recover her.'

All of a sudden Ali noticed how closely I was following the conversation. He swore, switched to rapid Lebanese, and that was the end of my understanding. The only word I caught in what followed sounded like 'fairchild'.